


Everybody Has a Friend

by musicforswimming



Category: E Street Band, Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco, The Hush Sound
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-03
Updated: 2008-03-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>everybody make sure to call Bruce Boss a lot, he really likes that</i> went up on Pete's livejournal, below a picture of Bruce and Brendon passed out on top of each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Has a Friend

**Author's Note:**

> Part of an AU a friend and I had been talking about for ages, wherein the E Street Band are all twenty-something in the present day and Pete Wentz signs them to FBR. This story was written for the **picfor1000** challenge over on LJ, with [this](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v233/picfor1000/challenge%206/04/04-06.jpg) as my assigned image. Also, as it might help explain a bit in the story: Bruce Springsteen got the nickname "the Boss" from his band, way back in the day. He reportedly hated the nickname, so, because they were boys, the band did the only natural thing, and used it at every possible opportunity until it caught on in the world at large. Bruce eventually resigned himself to it.

They don't quite get the whole scene thing, which ended up kind of cute. Ryan was reluctant to like them for it but they were just so goddamn _likeable_ that he couldn't help it. They were smiley-sweet and their clothes were...interesting, but not on purpose. Which wasn't fair to Patti and Max, who _could_ dress themselves, but who just looked kind of blandly nice.

He took Pete's word for it that they would be good together on the tour, because Pete knows this shit better than he does, but he still wondered. Except Pete -- and Patrick too, hell, _especially_ Patrick, from what he's heard -- was totally excited about them. Pete was rambling all over the Internet about how it's hard to be a saint in the city, dragging them into pictures so that they all looked a little deer-in-headlights when they finally got together for a pre-tour get-together.

Anyway, Ryan wasn't sure he wanted to like them at first, because they were totally new to the whole scene, and for all that Ryan's the king of mixed feelings about the scene, it's still something he _knows_. But then Spencer and Max started talking and it was like they'd known each other for years once they got going on drum shit, and Ryan found himself talking to the redhead and eventually she and a couple of the other dudes in their band dragged the frontman over and he was skinny and goofy-looking and sullen, and had a voice that, had Ryan met him before he met Brendon, might well have changed the face of Panic as the world knew it.

Somehow, after ten minutes and hearing his giggle, his stupid, _stupid_ fucking _giggle_, Ryan completely understood why Pete seemed so in love with this guy.  
   
   
   
   
Greta, at least, actually was a girl. That was something. Bruce had actually said something about the cute girl that first day, and how cool she seemed, and everyone stared at him, and seemed shocked in a way that might have been out of proportion? And Patti had said well, she tried, and finally Steve explained to him that there were no girls in Panic! at the Disco. Everyone else confirmed this, even Clarence, who could usually be counted on to back Bruce up on things like this.

But Greta was a girl. So there was that. She and Patti hit it off right away and were soon lounging on the floor in front of the coffee table, chatting. No one was entirely sure what they were chatting about initially -- everyone was vaguely unsettled by the way they took to each other, and worried as well that they might be planning some kind of takeover. These fears were totally unfounded; it turned out the real threat of a girly takeover came from Spencer.

Eventually Brendon sat down behind them, and started braiding Patti's hair, and it started to feel slightly less like the eighth grade dance: Bruce followed Brendon and Greta pulled something out of her enormous purse and it turned out to be sparkly hair clips, which she decided should go in Brendon and Bruce's hair.

At some point, when Patti, Jon, Max, Steve, and Bob were all arguing about the Rolling Stones, Brendon noticed that Bruce was surprisingly touchy-feely for a Jersey Shore boy who looked like he'd be more comfortable in a garage. He didn't respond negatively, for instance, when Brendon rested his head against his shoulder, and in fact Brendon thought he felt him grin a little, but Brendon was also kind of high at that point, so.  
   
   
   
   
_everybody make sure to call Bruce Boss a lot, he really likes that_ went up on Pete's livejournal, below a picture of Bruce and Brendon passed out on top of each other.

Buried at the bottom of the comments page was a single, plaintive comment, heartbreaking in its simplicity:

> **bspringsteen**: :(

Bruce still hadn't quite figured out all the buttons on LJ, but in light of the fact that he'd gotten one specifically for that entry, this was understandable. Pete liked that it was the nickname he hated, not that Pete was totally encouraging the fans to ship him with Brendon.

He didn't remove the note, though.  
   
   
   
   
Bruce let himself get dragged off for shopping with Brendon again, with suspiciously little protest, Brendon would note. He returned to the bus bearing another sparkly BFF necklace, because he was slowly working his way through every Claire's -- and a few other accessory stores, but mostly Claire's, because that was about all there was outside of the cities -- on the Eastern Seaboard in search of ~*~unique~*~ sets for everyone in the band. Bruce wore them as bracelets, the cheap chains wrapped around his wrist a couple times. The rest of the band seemed unsure, thus far, what to do with theirs; Clarence and Steven cheerfully wore theirs as necklaces. Bruce was using fewer loops on his bracelets the more he worked out, though, and Brendon had made enough public comments about how nice Bruce looked now that he'd bulked up a little that he didn't think he had to clarify them further.

Greta started making Bruce friendship bracelets out of embroidery thread, because they would be stronger than cheap accessory-store chains, which was pretty nice.

Brendon also noticed that he bought a pack of sparkly pencils, which were girly even for his tastes, and Brendon was confident enough in his masculinity to admit that that's saying something. Also, Brendon knEW for a fact that when Bruce wrote, it was usually in pen, and he knew this because Spencer was in the habit of stealing Bruce's pens, which would explain why he also bought a pack of pens. But it didn't explain the pencils, or at least it didn't until Bruce looked furtively around the bus and tucked them into Patti's guitar case.

At which point everything became clear, and he's just so fucking _sweet_ that Brendon can't even be disappointed.

"Dude," he said, "seriously, just ask her out or something."

Bruce just gave that stupid sweet fucking giggle.


End file.
